


Empty Nest

by skargasm



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-27
Updated: 2013-02-27
Packaged: 2017-12-03 19:41:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/701918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skargasm/pseuds/skargasm





	Empty Nest

**Title:** → Empty Nest  
 **Rating:** → R  
 **Author:** → skargasm **Pairing:** → N/A  
 **Prompt:** → Prompt #343: Incorporeal @ **Fandom:** → Original  
 **Word Count:** → 1114  
 **Genre:** → AU  
 **Beta (s):** → Unbeta'd but proofread  
 **Disclaimer:** → All mine.  
 **Summary:** → I have no idea where this chunk of bleakness came from – I had planned to write another chapter of 'Back 4 Good' when this wrote itself instead. Apologies for the dark tone.

* * *

When they first arrived, she was practically everything to them. 

She was sustenance and comfort, warmth and security. She felt needed in a way she had never been needed before, Her new role felt like the most important one she had ever played. It scared her – the depths of the love that she felt – because for the first time she truly **knew** that rejection really could kill her. But it was impossible to hold herself aloof. There was no way she could hold even the smallest part of herself back and she pushed the fear to the back of her mind.

As they grew, her role changed. For the first few years she was their main influence and anything external had to get through her to get to them. Family and friends commented on how she had thrown herself into the role almost to the exclusion of everything else but she ignored them. They didn't understand – how could they? Besides, they were just upset that they had to abide by her dictates or contact did not happen – they were merely bucking at her taking control. It was understandable and she did not let it deter her from her chosen path. Even when he walked away, saying there wasn't room for him, she stayed the course. After all, any man could be a father but it took a real man to be a daddy and obviously he wasn't cut out to be more than a sperm donor.

More years, and their sphere of influence widened. Suddenly there were words spoken that she knew she had never uttered within their hearing, jokes, comments, questions that threw her, made her feel off kilter. The few friends she had left told her it was to be expected, that now they were mixing with others their own age, she was no longer **everything** \- in fact, a lot of what she said was questioned as though the educators they met from outside knew more than she did simply because of their job title. 

It was difficult but she gritted her teeth, nodded along to yet another sentence that began 'Miss Evans says - “ and pretended that she didn't resent her position being usurped by some woman who had never been where she was. How could someone who wasn't a mother herself understand? How could she presume to mould and teach the most important resource a country could have?

Plays and school fairs brought her back into prominence and she was in high demand for her excellent seamstress skills when it came to making costumes; her fund raising abilities when it came to tombolas and jumble sales. Others apparently gasped with awe at how amazing she was, and suddenly they saw her through new eyes and were all agog with how their little friend so-and-so said that she was 'cool and fab, and please could she help with the costumes again next year.....” Her role had changed but it was no less important it seemed and she was content. 

The next stage of school and it was all about studying, helping them find their feet with homework and classwork, chosen electives, languages, everything that school demanded of them. She overcame her natural aversion to mathematics and physics and helped them study so that exams were nowhere near as stressful as they could have been. Revision and homework schedules were created; brain food was cooked and consumed; car journeys because times when final testing could be done. 

They needed her more than ever – no other mother spent so much time, devoted so much effort to their education and they were so grateful. At least, she thought they were as they absentmindedly threw dirty P.E kit in the general direction of laundry baskets, whined about uniform not being cleaned and ironed for when it was necessary, claimed to be reminding her of promises to drop them places or give them money when she was almost convinced it was the first she heard of it. 

Their results were worth it though. She almost burst with pride when they passed a mass of examinations with excellent marks and received grateful thanks. Thanks and requests for Prom wear and limousines and corsages and spending money, but thanks nevertheless. 

Then they discovered the opposite sex.

Nothing could have prepared her for this – until now, the opposite sex had never even blipped on the radar. Now phone calls came to the house that weren't for her; doors were slammed in her face as privacy was suddenly essential; rolled eyes and sneers greeted her every comment as she was pushed to the background and her opinion discarded as old fashioned and constrictive and _lame_. 

Perhaps if she hadn't submerged herself so fully into the role it would not have cut so deeply but she had. She had thrown herself in far over her head; had let them consume her at the cost of relationships – personal and familial – until they were all that she had left. They were her everything – their love was her comfort and security; their company was her warmth and sustenance for her tired and often lonely soul. Only to find that she was not their everything. 

Not anymore. 

In fact, possibly not in a long time.

By the time university came around, she wasn't even surprised when they chose to go as far away as physically possible. She had become the invisible woman – practically incorporeal unless they needed cash, a lift somewhere or forms signed so that they could escape. Everything she had done for them seemed to count for nothing, and reminding them merely caused cries of 'stop living in the past' and 'what did she expect, that they would forgo a life for her just because she decided to give up her life for them'? Perhaps not in so many words, but that was what was behind it. 

By the time they left, she seemed to be practically nothing to them. They had so much ahead of them – a new life, new friends, new places to explore – why would they choose to look back? 

She looked around at what was left of her life and realised that all of those friends and family members had been right, that the warnings had all come to pass, and here she was in the empty nest with only memories and photographs to remember things by. And she remembered when she had been so absolutely petrified at giving her all to them, when she had thought that rejection really might just kill her. And realised that she had been so, so right. 

It had.

* * *

fin

* * *


End file.
